Advertising (PPC)

Most of us know the power of advertising, well, actually we probably don’t. Most of us dislike advertising, and probably make the correlation that because we don’t like it, its not effective. However that could not be further from the truth. As much as we don’t want to believe it, advertising is a huge part of successful businesses. Some of you might be asking me however, what if I don’t have the money to advertise?

Well fortunately advertising has become a lot more affordable, and a lot more customizable for businesses. Done are the days where companies put their advertising on billboards, radio commercials, and television commercials. Well actually that is still quite prevalent, but there is a new type of advertising that has emerged, and it’s called targeted marketing. I’ll give you an example of what this type of advertising looks like. Recently I had my pool remodeled by a local pool remodel company. However I did not hear about this company from a friend or see their add on television or anything like that. I actually saw an add on facebook.

Since I was considering pool remodeling at the time, I clicked the add and learned more about the company. However I was shopping around at the time and didn’t take any action to call, at least not yet.

Before I explain the process of me purchasing from this company, lets first talk about how that add showed up on my facebook in the first place, and the technology that got it there. To be honest I don’t yet know the full details about how this technology works, but I can sure tell you it’s effective. In short, your computer leaves a cookie trail of where it has been on the internet, like web pages you have visited, and then marketing companies are able to collect this cookie trail of data. They then use this information to decide what adds to target at you. So in my scenario, facebook knew I had been looking online at some pool remodeling companies, so that is why it served me up that add. Then through a process of re-marketing, you will get re advertised those brands and services you have previously looked into, again and again. Have you ever noticed an add will show up on facebook or somewhere else of a brand you were looking at previously online.

Some of you may think its creepy that companies know what you have been looking at, and I would agree. Although it’s kind of what it is, so lets learn to leverage it.

With modern marketing strategies via the internet, you can now target specific people who may be interested in your product or service rather than a blanket approach that doesn’t specifically target anyone. This is due to the design of the internet, and the data that is collected on people’s online patterns. It is one of the best ways for small businesses to spend money on advertising that they know will go towards people who are actually interested in their service. Most of this advertising is referred to as PPC or pay per click, which means that you pay for how many times the add is clicked on. You can control your marketing campaigns by targeting specific ages, genders, income levels and so on for specific companies like facebook. Where as Google adds (Adwords) are a little different, and target specific words people are searching in Google, but none the less you pay for how often someone actually clicks on the add. Additionally you can control how much money you spend on these add per day, so you can extend your budget to include the whole week, month, etc.

imagine if someone who was paying for a billboard advertisement could control who saw it, and only pay for those that really looked at it.

Today’s marketing and advertising are perfect for small businesses with limited marketing budgets who still want to get their business in front of people. With a lot of flexibility and low cost, a small business can begin to advertise without committing thousands of dollars to a billboard or television commercial. Not to mention they can track the success of the add by looking at the CTR (click through rate) and constantly refine the add to target more and more of the people they are looking to market to. You don’t see a billboard have that kind of flexibility.

Back to my story with pool resurfacing company…

After I had initially looked at the first add on facebook for the pool remodel company, I was beginning to be re-marketed the add on facebook, and on other websites again and again. The add was beginning to show up everywhere online for me, but not in an overwhelming way, but rather as a constant reminder that I need to get my pool remolded. After a while I finally called the company and purchased their services. After talking with the owner about why I purchased their services, he admitted to me that they don’t spend that much money on PPC advertising, but it has been really effective for them. He was a real life person who accredited some of his success to this style of advertising, and I am a standing testimonial of well it works, because I became a client of the company due to their marketing strategy.

My suggestion is to start small and ask for help from the companies that offer the advertising. I know from experience Google has a great staff to assist you with their Adwords advertising.